The remedy which the tradition of Western thought has proposed for the
unpredictability and irreversibility of action has consisted in
abstaining from action altogether, in the withdrawal from the sphere
of interaction with others, in the hope that one’s freedom and
integrity could thereby be preserved. Platonism, Stoicism and
Christianity elevated the sphere of contemplation above the sphere of
action, precisely because in the former one could be free from the
entanglements and frustrations of action. Arendt’s proposal, by
contrast, is not to turn one’s back on the realm of human affairs, but
to rely on two faculties inherent in action itself, the faculty of
forgiving and the faculty of
promising. These two faculties are closely connected,
the former mitigating the irreversibility of action by absolving the
actor from the unintended consequences of his or her deeds, the latter
moderating the uncertainty of its outcome by binding actors to certain
courses of action and thereby setting some limit to the
unpredictability of the future. Both faculties are, in this respect,
connected to temporality: from the standpoint of the present
forgiving looks backward to what has happened and absolves the actor
from what was unintentionally done, while promising looks forward as
it seeks to establish islands of security in an otherwise uncertain
and unpredictable future.